


Not Out

by itchyfingers



Series: The Willa and Chris Stories [2]
Category: Chris Pine - Fandom
Genre: Angst, F/M, Infertility, Infidelity, Old Friends, chris pine au, failing marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-22
Updated: 2015-03-10
Packaged: 2018-03-14 13:06:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3411713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itchyfingers/pseuds/itchyfingers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Willa and Chris are both back in the Bay Area. But that might just make matters worse. As she struggles to fix her marriage, he is trying to decide if he can let her be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter was titled Not Out after the song by Greg Laswell. I heard it as I was editing the first chapter and it fit perfectly.

Willa left her suitcase by the front door. Every knot the masseuse had worked out the day before had reappeared on her drive home from the airport. Everything had changed, but driving up the lane to her house, everything was still the same. “Something smells good,” she called. It was true. Something smelled  _really good._

“I thought I would make you supper,” Jonathan said from the kitchen.

Willa’s forehead wrinkled as she made her way to the big kitchen in the old farmhouse. It had definitely seen better days but it was her favorite place in their home, with big windows that looked out over the fields and a huge sink and counters made out of butcher blocks. Jonathan was pulling a casserole dish out of the bigger of the two ovens on the antique stove he had fixed. “That smells like real mac and cheese.”

He set the dish to rest on one of the burners. “That’s because it is.”

Willa stopped in the middle of the floor and stared at her husband. His hair was still damp from the outdoor shower he used before he came in after a day in the fields, and his curls clung to the nape of his neck and his forehead. The light bounced off the hairs on the back of his arms and on his bare feet. She’d seen him like this so many times, in sun faded jeans and a t-shirt proclaiming Visualize Whirled Peas, that she  had forgotten how handsome he could be and how much she loved his tall, lean body, muscled from spending all day every day in manual labor. “ _You_  made mac and cheese.”

“Yes, I did. Do you remember the Olveras?”

Willa shook her head.

“They have the organic, cruelty free dairy farm?”

She grimaced. “Sorry.” She hadn’t spent a Saturday working the farmer’s market with him since she had opened her bookstore.

“Well, they’ve started making cheese so I bought some of their Colby Jack and some of their whole milk and butter and I made you mac and cheese.”

Willa looked at the bubbling casserole dish with the toasted crumb topping. “It’s not my birthday. It’s not our anniversary.” Her back stiffened. “Did you buy that tractor we can’t afford?”

Jonathan sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. Willa could barely remember what it felt like to have those callouses rub against her skin, the roughness such a contrast to the smoothness of her own skin. “No. I just wanted to welcome you home. I know it’s been bad lately between us and this is my way of saying that I’m sorry.”

“So, are you still a vegan?” What she really wanted to know was if she was going to get to eat that whole dish by herself.

“Unless I’m eating with you. Then I’m a vegetarian. And I’ll eat gluten.”

Willa felt like the San Andreas Fault had just shifted under her feet. She actually grabbed the edge of the counter for support.  “I…I don’t understand.”

Jonathan shook his head and walked across the kitchen to her. He cupped her face in both of his hands. Willa’s eyes sank shut as his fingertips stroked across her cheeks before burrowing into her hair. “I love you, Willa. You’ve given up so much for me and because of me; you shouldn’t have to give up cheese too.”

“That might be the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Jonathan pulled her into his arms. “Can I get a kiss from my wife now?”

“Yes, you may.” She went up on her tip toes and wrapped her arms around him. He kissed her gently at first, but his hands slipped down to her ass and the kiss grew into something deeper and wild, flavored with desperation and regret. He pulled back first.

“Let’s eat before it gets cold.”

Willa didn’t really care about the food anymore–he hadn’t kissed her like that in months–but she didn’t want to reject his peace offering either. “Okay.”

* * *

Willa licked the final remnants of the melted cheese off of her fork before putting it down. “Dinner was delicious. The chives were a great addition.”

“Thank you.” He moved to refill her wine glass but she put her hand over the top of it. “I think I’ve had enough for tonight.”

“You’re not tired already are you?”

“I’m still on New York time, and I have to get up early in the morning. I missed a Tuesday, so you know it’s going to be insane tomorrow.”

“Right. You go to bed. I’ll clean up in here.”

“I was hoping you would come to bed with me.”

“I’ll be in soon.”

Willa took a quick shower and was sitting on their bed naked when Jonathan entered. Her laptop was open in front of her, incongruous against the hand pieced quilt that covered their bed.

“That’s a lovely sight.” He pulled off his t-shirt and tossed it towards the hamper. It landed perfectly on top of the other clothes piled there.

Willa shut her laptop and shoved it under the bed so she wouldn’t step on it in the morning. “Why don’t you join me?”

“I thought you were tired.”

“I’m not too tired for you.”

“Willa…” His hands paused on the buttons of his jeans.

“We can at least try. It might work this time.” She tried to keep the desperation hidden behind a hopeful smile.

“I gave you cheese. I can’t give you a baby.”

“This isn’t about a baby. I want to make love to my husband.”

“You  _know_  I haven’t been able to do that–”

“Let’s try again.”

“So I can fail again? So I can feel like even less of a man than I already do?”

“You’re still a man. It’s not like you’re a stud animal. I want my husband. I need my husband.”

“And I can tell you that it won’t work. I look at you and I want to. I  _want_ to, Willa, but I can’t! I kissed you in the kitchen and  _nothing._ ”

“Could you with the busty Asian girls?”

“What?”

“You used my laptop to look at porn while I was gone. You’re not very good about cleaning up your search history.”

He looked at the floor.

“You could, couldn’t you?”

He ran his hand over his hair before he looked up at her. He still didn’t say anything.

“And the barely legal teens? Did that work for you as well?”

“Willa, please.”

“No, I want to know what besides me you can’t get off to. Did the gangbang do it for you?”

“It’s not about you. Just because I’m looking at porn doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”

“I wouldn’t care if you were jacking off to porn every day if at least you were fucking me too. But you can’t or you won’t and you don’t even care!”

“I  _care_ , Willa! God damnit, it’s fucking killing me how much I care. I don’t want to hurt you, but sex was about getting pregnant for so long and you got so sad every month, and it got worse every month and  _you_  got worse every month, and then when we found out that it was my fault, all I felt was that I could never make you happy.”

“You have to fix this!”

“What do you want me to do about it?” he yelled. “It’s not like I  _want_  to be impotent with you.”

“Go to a doctor. A physical doctor or a shrink or whatever you do, but I need my husband. I need  _all_  of my husband.”

He slumped down on the old rocking chair that sat in the corner of the room and held his head in his hands. “What if I’m just broken? Even more broken?”

Willa got off the bed and hugged him, holding his head against her stomach. “You have to go to a doctor, Jonathan. I can’t live like this anymore.”

He pulled away and looked up at her. “Are you giving me an ultimatum?

Willa sat down on the edge of the bed and wrapped her arms around herself. “I think I am,” she said softly.

“I go to a doctor or you’re what? You’re leaving me?”

“I can survive without a child if it means that much to you. But I refuse to give up my child _and_  my husband.”

“I’m still your husband.”

“Not in all the ways I need you to be. I need to be…I need someone who…I need more than what you can give me right now.”

He stood up and started pacing, his long strides devouring the worn wooden planks under his feet. “So I’m supposed to go tell a doctor I can’t get it up with my wife,” he finally said.

“Yes.”

“Even though it would be humiliating,” he shot at her.

“Yes. Because lying next to a man each night who can’t get aroused by me is killing me by degrees.”

He paused and rolled his eyes at her. “Stop being overly dramatic, Willa.”

She launched off the bed and grabbed him by the belt loops. “I’m  _not_. I’m not happy, Jonathan. The mac and cheese was delicious and thoughtful, but I would be a vegan for the rest of my life to make everything better between us.”

“I love you, Willa. You have to know that.”

“I know you do, but right now I need you to get over your embarrassment and do this for me, because you saying the words aren’t enough anymore. I need you to put my emotional wellbeing ahead of your own embarrassment.”

“And if I don’t?”

This time it was Willa who couldn’t say the hurtful words.

“If I don’t, you’re going to leave me.”

She let go of him and sat on the bed again, pulling her knees up to her chest. “I think I have to.”

“Can’t we give it more time? Just to see if it goes away?”

“No! You  _can_  get it up. It’s not a physical problem. You just can’t get it up with me. It’s psychological and those types of problems don’t go away on their own. You need to see a shrink!”

“You know how much I hate psychiatrists.” He went back to pacing.

“Well decide: do you hate psychiatrists more than you love your wife? Because that’s the choice you’re facing.”

It took a few minutes, a few minutes where Willa struggled to breath and every muscle in Jonathan’s shoulders tied themselves in unending knots. “Fine,” he finally said. “I’ll call around tomorrow and see if I can an appointment with a psychiatrist. Happy?”

“If you want, I can look up some names. Maybe find some that specialize in sexual stuff.”

“I can do it myself.” He grabbed his pillow off the bed and turned around.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m gonna sleep on the couch tonight.”

“Jonathan, don’t be like this.”

He paused in the doorway. “Sometimes, Willa, you make it really difficult to be around you.” He shut the door before she had time to respond.

* * *

Willa sat in her small cluttered office, going through the reports of what had happened while she had been in NYC. Her coffee was cold in its cup and she was only a quarter through her inbox, even though she had come in early. Jonathan had been gone before she left though, leaving a pile of neatly folded blankets and his pillow at the end of the couch. She wondered if he was planning to use them again tonight.

Her cell phone rang and she picked it up and answered it, even though it was an unknown number. This was the number on her business cards so it could be anyone. “Hello, Copper & Company Booksellers. How can I help you today?”

“Willa?”

She knew who it was immediately and swung her door the rest of the way shut. “Yes.”

“This is Chris,” he said unnecessarily. “Do you have a minute we can talk?”

“Ummm,” she surveyed the disaster of her desk, “Sure. I can spare a minute or two.”

“We might have a small problem.”

She slumped back in her chair. “We?” There was a we now?

“Well, it could be more of a problem for you actually, but it involves both of us.”

“What’s going on, Christopher?” Her stomach couldn’t take any more unsettledness than it was already dealing with.

“There’s a picture of us together.”

Willa couldn’t think. “A picture,” she repeated back dumbly.

“Of us on the plane. Someone posted it online. It’s obvious who I am, but your chair was reclined enough that no one would recognize you, except if they know your hair.”

“So Jonathan.”

“Right.”

“Other than him hating you even more than before, I don’t see how this is a problem for you. You’re sitting next to someone on a plane. Big deal.”

“We’re holding hands in the picture. And your wedding ring is evident.”

That changed things. “So the most eligible bachelor is suddenly off the market to an unknown woman.”

“Right.”

He didn’t sound nearly as worried about this as she thought he would be under the circumstances. “So what are you going to do about it?”

“What  _can_ I do?”

“Can’t you make them take it down or something?” He had to have a plan. He  _always_  had a plan.

“On what grounds? We were in a public place, there was no expectation of privacy. It may be rude but it’s not illegal.”

“But you could like write a program or hack something and take it down, couldn’t you?”

“Real life doesn’t work like the movies.” There was a hint of laughter in his voice. “It’s on multiple sites. If I take it down, it’s just going to arouse more curiosity.”

“So buy the rights to it and make him take it down because he’s violating copyright.” She might not understand the intricacies of the internet but she understood copyright law.

“And give it the Barbara Streisand effect?”

Willa rummaged around in her junk yard of a brain for a moment but came up empty. “What’s that?”

“You know Google Earth?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, Streisand got pissed that you could see details of her compound on it and sued Google to take down the pictures and it hit the news and drove traffic to Google Earth because all these people who had no idea it was there now heard of it and wanted to see it.”

“So you’re not going to do anything.”

“It’s the smartest way of handling something like this.”

She took a deep breath and noisily blew it out. “And if people ask you about it?”

“No comment.”

She reached for her hair but it wasn’t there. She was going to have to come up with another nervous habit. “And if people ask me if that’s me in the picture?”

“I can’t tell you how to handle this, Willa.”

“So you’re hanging me out to dry on this.”

“I’m not hanging you out to dry. I don’t have a right to tell you how to run your life. Even if we were in a relationship, the most I could do was offer advice.”

“And what’s your advice, Chris? What happens if I tell someone that I had a one-night stand with you?”

“Well, it depends on the person.”

Her fingernails dug into the armrest of her chair for a moment. “What happens to  _you_  if it publicly comes out that you had an affair with a married woman?”

“The reputation gets a bit tarnished, but as long as I keep coming up with brilliant new programs, in the overall picture it won’t matter.”

Willa let her head fall back against the chair and closed her eyes.“It must be nice to be such a genius that you can do whatever you want with no consequences.”

“There’s consequences. My parents will be disappointed in me. Your parents will be hurt. People we both know will talk. But I’m not married Willa. I don’t have as many consequences as you do because I’m alone.”

“Being married doesn’t mean you’re not alone,” she shot back before she could stop herself.

Chris hesitated. “How did things go last night?” he asked gently.

She sat up straight in her chair. “He made me real mac and cheese. It was his way of apologizing.”

“That’s great.”

“It was delicious.”

They listened to each other in silence for almost a minute. Willa finally spoke. “I have to go. Things are busy here. I’ll let you know if any press types show up sniffing around.”

“Willa, I’m sorry.”

Willa rubbed her hand over her eyes to fight back the bitter tears that were threatening to emerge. She could  _feel_  his apology in her body. How did he know how to hug her with his voice? “It’s not your fault. I made my bed. I get to lay in it.”

“I’m still sorry.”

“Bye, Chris.”  She ended the call and put her phone back on her desk and then slumped over, resting her forehead against the stack of upcoming release notices. She got to lay in it, alright. She got to lay in it alone.


	2. Chapter 2

Willa stabbed restlessly at her salad. Only the crumbs o fher grilled cheese sandwich were left on the plate. She’d been home a week now and while Jonathan was sleeping in their bed again, he was barely touching her. He couldn’t even manage a decent conversation over dinner. “Did you call today?”

“I didn’t have time.”

She stabbed at a crouton and watched it break into pieces under the tines of her fork with satisfaction. “You didn’t have time to make a phone call?”

“One of the irrigation systems sprung a leak, the tractor blew that fucking gasket again, and Sean called in sick. I was  _busy_. I had things to do.”

“Besides me,” she muttered.

Jonathan got up from the table and carried his plate to the sink. “Knock it off, Willa. You know what it’s like running a business.”

“I can call and set you up an appointment.”

“You’re my wife, Willa, not my mother. I’m perfectly capable of making my own doctor appointments.”

What was it with men accusing her of mothering them? “I’m just trying to help.”

“No, you’re trying to run my life. Again.”

This time a cherry tomato came to a gruesome end under her angry fork. “How am I running your life? We’re living on a farm in Gilroy! If I was running your life, that’s not where we would be.”

“And don’t I know it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He finished washing his plate and started drying it off. “It’s been two weeks since you’ve complained about the roosters. I think that’s a new record for you, though the fact that you were across the country for a week of that may have helped.”

“They’re roosters. I think you are the only person in the world who wouldn’t complain about them.”

Jonathan didn’t say anything as he put his dishes away. Then he leaned against the counter and stared at her, twisting the dishtowel into a thick rope as the silence hung thick and awkward between them. “Do you remember the first thing you said to me when we found out my sperm count was inadequate?” he finally asked.

“No.”

“You said, ‘Well, I guess we should start looking at adoption agencies.’”

By the look on his face, she could tell she was missing something. “And?”

“Exactly! I find out that _I’m_  the problem, that I can’t father a child and you don’t say I’m sorry, you don’t ask me how I’m feeling, you don’t hug me, you’re just on to the next step in your plan. The year of us trying, you changed my diet, you changed what kind of underwear I have, you gave me vitamins, and those last three or four months you stopped having sex with me unless it was your fertile days.”

“I did not.”

“You  _did._ Believe me, you did. You came up with some excuse why you couldn’t every time I tried to make love to you, but when that test said you were ovulating, you were all over me like a fungus, and as soon as I came, you were done. Lying on your back with a pillow under your hips and your legs propped up on the wall reading a book. I couldn’t get a cuddle, I couldn’t get a kiss. I’ve gotten more affection from a cow that I had just inseminated by shoving my arm inside her with a sample of bull semen than I did from you.”

Willa shoved away her salad. There was only so much violence one could do on mesclun mix without feeling guilty. “So you not being able to get it up is my fault?”

“I’m not saying it’s your fault.” He turned around and started wiping down the counters with the damp towel. “I’m saying that I feel like a tractor that just blew a gasket for the fourth time.  I feel like a broken tool around you rather than a man.”

She’d never seen him look so alone, especially when she was right there. His words echoed the ones she had said, about not feeling like a woman. She hadn’t really thought about what the test results had meant for his own self-image. Part of his own dreams for the future had disappeared as well and she hadn’t even had the decency to give him a hug; she’d only thought about what it meant for her plans. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel like that.”

“I’m sure you didn’t, but you did. And then when you found out that I didn’t want to adopt or use somebody else’s sperm, you said, ‘So, you mean it’s just going to be me and you for the rest of our lives?’ Like we weren’t enough. Like _I_  wasn’t enough.” He balled up the towel and threw it as hard as he could. It hit one of the mason jars they used as a vase and knocked it over. The glass shattered as it hit the ground. “God, Willa, you’re the love of my life. You’re all I needed to be happy, and finding out I wasn’t enough for you destroyed something inside me. I was just a piece of your puzzle, and you,” he sighed and tears fell onto cheeks, only to be dashed away with an angry brush of his hand. “You were my whole picture.”

Willa finally understood why people said that ignorance was bliss because understanding stabbed like a dagger and burned like acid. “So you can do it to porn because you don’t feel like a disappointment to a video.”

“The whole point of porn is to make sure you don’t feel like a disappointment. It’s not because I don’t think you’re sexy and gorgeous and wonderful, Willa. I never meant to hurt you like that.” He pulled out the chair next to her and slumped into it. “You didn’t call for a whole day. I kept waiting for you to call Monday night and you never did and part of me wondered if you ever would call again. So I uh…made sure that I still could do it if it was someone else.”

“I understand.” Oh, did she understand.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you either.” She reached for his hand and gingerly placed hers over it where it rested on the table. They stayed that way for a few minutes.

Finally, he picked up her hand and kissed the back of it before standing up. “I’ll call tomorrow. I promise.”

“Thank you.” She stood up and retrieved the broom from the closet and began sweeping up the shards of glass and flower petals.

* * *

Jonathan sat in the waiting room at the psychiatric clinic. There had been a cancellation so he had only had to wait for a week to be seen rather than a month. His knee bobbed in time with his accelerated heartbeat. He hated doctors. He hadn’t seen one for anything short of stitches since he had turned eighteen. Other patients flipped through magazines but he couldn’t concentrate. The television in the corner was tuned to some annoying entertainment channel, full of the kind of inane celebrity gossip he hated. It grabbed his attention when the newscaster – if you could call her that – said, “It looks like Chris Pine, the genius behind such apps as Serve and Poppular, might be off the market. A picture surfaced of the tech bad boy holding hands on a flight with a woman who is wearing a wedding ring. We called the offices of this most eligible bachelor list mainstay for comment but our calls were not returned.”

He stared at the photo. The quality was a little grainy, but he would recognize that shock of copper hair anywhere, even cut short. He stood up and walked out of the waiting room.

* * *

Willa smiled as she saw Jonathan walk through the door of her shop. He so rarely had time to visit her at work anymore. She set the stack of books she was shelving back on the cart and waved. He came right to her.

“Hey, love.” She wasn’t going to bring up his appointment. She knew he must have just gotten through with it but she was going to let him bring up the topic on his own. That much she had learned.

He didn’t smile. “Do you have a minute we could talk?”

Her brow creased. “For you, of course.”

“In your office?”

“Um, yeah.” Her stomach roiled with anxiety as he followed her to the back of the store and her office. Either the appointment had gone horrendously bad or he knew about her and Chris. Neither option boded well for what was about to happen.

Once the door was shut, he didn’t waste any time. “That’s you in the picture.” He couldn’t even make it a question.

Willa collapsed into her chair. “Yes.” She wouldn’t insult him by denying it or asking what picture. He had obviously seen it.

“Did you sleep with him?”

It hurt worse than she had thought it would, so much worse. She couldn’t bear to see the pain in his face or the rigidity with which he held himself, like he was afraid if he moved he would break or explode or attack. She squeezed her eyes shut. “Yes.”

He nodded once. His jaw twisted and he swallowed loudly before staring at the floor.  “Have you seen him since you’ve been back?” he finally asked.

She could barely get the words out around the jagged broken pieces of her heart. “No. It was just a one night thing. It was a mistake.”

His hand moved over his mouth, rubbing back and forth. His calloused fingertips grated over his unshaven jaw. “I don’t think you should come home tonight.”

That she had not expected from him. “What?”

“I’m gonna need some space and time to deal with this, Willa.”

Every question racing through her head sounded stupid and insensitive even to herself. “Of course.” She dug her fingernails into her palms to take her mind off of the pain in her heart. “I understand.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow. Maybe I’ll have a better idea of what I want to do by then.”

“Jonathan,” she said as he opened the door. He paused but didn’t look around at her. His shoulders were bowed under an invisible weight. “I’m so sorry.”

He shook his head. “Not as sorry as I am.”

* * *

Willa sat in the parking lot of the closest In-n-Out, eating her double-double with grilled onions in the non-dark of a night illuminated by passing headlights and storefronts and the halogen fog of streetlamps. She couldn’t decide where to go for the night. She immediately ruled out her parents’ house; her mother didn’t need any more stress. Her few friends would want to know what had happened that Jonathan had kicked her out of the house and she couldn’t deal with confessing her misdeed to them. There were plenty of cheap hotels she could stay at, but so soon after  _The Four Seasons_ , she didn’t think she could survive scratchy linens and flat pillows without… She sighed. Without what? Doing something stupid like cheat on her husband?  The monthly report she’d ran that morning had showed sales were down for another consecutive month year over year, so a nice hotel was out of the question. She just wanted to cry and have someone hug her and tell her everything would be alright, though there was no way everything would be alright ever again.

Finally, when her food was gone and she had again ruled out any of her friends as options, she scrolled through her contacts and found the address she was looking for. With a few taps, Google Maps gave her step by step directions to her destination.

* * *

It was just after midnight when Chris pulled through the security gate and up the drive to his garage. An unfamiliar white car was parked to one side of his driveway. He parked in the garage and then got out and went and looked at the car. One glance in the window at the book release flyers strewn across the backseat made it patently clear who owned the dusty white vehicle.

He hurried inside only to find all the lights out. “Willa?” There was no answer. He went to his bedroom but she wasn’t there. He found her in the guest room sound asleep. The box of Kleenex from the guest bath was on the bed next to her, along with several crumpled tissues. With a frown, he pulled her blanket up a little higher and then quietly closed the door. There would be time enough to talk in the morning.


	3. Chapter 3

Willa eyed her phone as it vibrated on her desk, debating about whether or not to answer the call. She needed to. Chris deserved that much for letting her crash at his house last night. Besides, it would momentarily distract her from the depressing sales reports and declining account balances she was poring over. She answered the phone with a simple, “Hi.”

“You were gone before I woke up.” Chris stared out the huge windows of his office at the wetland they had created next to the campus to help remediate lost wildlife habitat from its construction. Sometimes he saw egrets out there fishing but right now it was empty of life.

“I had some errands I needed to run.” The tags she had torn off the clothes she had purchased at Target that morning were still on her desk. She’d purchased new mascara as well. Without it, her eyelashes completely disappeared and gave her a permanently startled look.

When she didn’t continue and the silence lasted long enough that the ripples caused by some small animal jumping into the water had dissipated, he spoke again. “Are you okay?”

She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. Was she okay? Probably not, but she hadn’t been okay in so long that saying no really didn’t mean anything anymore. “I don’t even know how to begin to answer that.”

“Are you safe?” That had been his first concern when he had seen her sleeping in his guest room last night.

“Oh yeah. He just, um… He saw the photo and asked me not to come home last night.”

“He kicked you out?” Chris was surprised by that detail. “Did you tell him everything that happened?”

“Yes. He asked and I couldn’t…I _won’t_ lie to him, Chris.” Not now when honesty was probably too late to help.

Todd stuck his head in the door and Chris waved him off. “I would never ask you to lie.”

“I know. I just…we both talked a lot…yelled a lot too if I’m being honest since I got back from New York and we had sort of laid all of our cards on the table and I realized that I’ve been hurting him without knowing it and he agreed to go see a doctor. I’m pretty sure that’s where he saw the photo actually, in a magazine or on the tv at the doctor’s office.”

“Alanis Morrisette would consider that ironic.”

Willa snorted. “Yeah, well, what does she know?” That entire song was fingernails on the chalkboard of her soul.

Chris settled into his chair. Now that he knew she was safe some of the more outré plans he had been imagining on his drive to work that morning could be discarded. “What can I do to help? Do you need someplace to stay this evening?”

Willa gripped the arm of her chair with her free hand to keep it from shaking. She didn’t deal with uncertainty well.  Her breakfast sat half eaten on her desk because each bite made her nauseated. “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen. He told me he would call me today when he’d had some time to think.”

“I’m here for you. You know that, right?”

“I know,” she kept the quaver out of her voice through a herculean effort, “and that helps and makes it worse at the same time.”

Chris winced as he heard the tightness in her words. If he didn’t have a morning of important meetings with venture capitalists, he would drive to Santa Cruz right now just to give her a hug. “I don’t want to make it worse for you.”

“I know that and I know you’re not doing it on purpose, but if I had slept with anyone else, this would be so much easier to deal with. I mean, I still cheated and we’d have to work through that somehow, but it’s you.”

“Of course it’s me. You wouldn’t have slept with anyone else Willa.”

“You sound very confident in yourself.”

“No. It’s not about me being some irresistible stud. It’s _me._ I’m safe for you. We have a history together and you knew I wouldn’t push for more or cause any problems.”

“Why did you come to my house last night? Why not your parents or a friend or a hotel?”

“I can’t really afford a hotel.” God, how she hated admitting that to him. She’d aimlessly wandered around his house the previous night as she waited for him to come home. He probably hadn’t had to worry about affording things in a decade. It had emphasized how much things had changed in the years they had been apart. “And the last thing my parents need to deal with right now is their daughter screwing up her marriage. Things are bad enough as it is.”

“Is it your mom?”

“Yeah. She’s not responding as well as the doctors would like to the chemo. And as for friends… I don’t want to share what’s going on with Jonathan and me with anyone. I don’t want people to look at him differently.”

“So you came to me.”

She shrugged and straightened a stack of books on her desk. The piles of books she needed to read were never ending and stood in columns as tall as she was around the walls of her office. “You already know what’s going on.”

“I know. And I won’t pry. And I won’t push you to do what I want. I’ll just wait and be here for you.”

“You always were good at being patient. I’m not sure many other guys would have waited that long.”

“You’re worth waiting for, Willa.”

She laughed. “You make it sound like you’re still waiting for me.”

Her laughter was met with silence.

She stopped her nervous puttering as she waited in vain for him to respond. “Chris? You’re not waiting for me, are you?”

“Did you know that I went by your parents’ house to see you after the Sidewinder IPO?”

“No. My parents never told me.”

“I asked them not to. I’d just had the biggest success of my life and I wanted to see you because… because it felt a bit empty. I had my face on magazine covers and was flush with cash and had important people calling me and wanting to hear about my next idea and I kept thinking, ‘Willa would find all this hysterically funny.’”

She smiled wistfully. “I was so proud of you.” It was the Sidewinder IPO that had sparked the biggest fight she and Jonathan had ever had. Well, until the whole baby issue had reared its ugly head. Jonathan had gone on a rant about how technology stocks were ruining the world and his rude comments about Chris, who until that point had been a no-last-name ex of Willa’s, had spurred her into defending him.

“Your mom said you were dating this really nice guy and your dad kept raving about how wonderful Jonathan was. I could see the pity in both of their faces. You’d moved on and I obviously hadn’t.”

“They never told me.”

Chris tiredly rubbed his forehead and sighed. “You were happy and I didn’t want to mess that up for you.”

 “So you waited.”

“No. At least I didn’t think I was waiting. I dated a lot. I’ve had several girlfriends but they never lasted for more than six months. They all said pretty much the same thing when they dumped me.”

“That you were lousy in bed?” she teased.

He laughed. “That’s one complaint none of them had. It was that my head was always somewhere else. They never felt like they were the center of my attention.”

“Well, you’re busy conquering the world. Of course your attention is going to be divided at times.”

“Not ‘at times.’ Never.  And I think they may have been on to something, Willa. They were right, but it wasn’t my head that was somewhere else.”

Her chest felt hot and tight as his voice dipped on those last few words. “What was it?” she whispered into the heavy silence.

“You know the answer to that question.”

He was right. Of course he was right. She heard the ring of the bell over the front door as one of her employees came in and swung the door to her office shut. “We hadn’t seen each other in over a decade, Chris. You can’t be in love with me still.”

Chris started pacing his office. He’d told himself that every hour for the last two weeks and hadn’t managed to convince himself of it. “Why not?”

“Because I’ve grown up and changed!”

“Yes, you have, but you’ve changed in the same way that a bud turns to a blossom or a wine is aged. You’ve just become more of the person I was in love with all those years ago. We grew apart in college because neither of us were willing to push the other one to make them a priority. I’m not going to push you to choose me or give you any ultimatums, Willa. I’m simply letting you know that I’m willing to make you a priority.”

“Chris…” She didn’t know what to say. This wasn’t what she had expected from him. This wasn’t what she wanted from him.

“I had to be honest with you. I had to tell you. I thought it was going to be a one night thing, but that night made me realize so many things. These last few weeks I’ve had to force myself not to call you every day. You came back into my life and I don’t want you to walk out of it again.”

“I’m _married_ , Chris.” She wiped the back of her hand across her cheeks. Thank god for waterproof mascara, right?

“I know!” He slammed his fist against the window and then rested his forehead against it and took a few calming breaths. “Damn it, Willa,” he said softly, “I know. I despise myself a little bit for putting this on you because I don’t want to make your life harder, but I _love_ you. I want you to be happy and if that’s not with me, then I’ll live with that.  I just couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t let you know how I feel. I had promised myself I wouldn’t say anything unless you came to me and then you did but you disappeared again before I could talk to you.”

“Chris, I can’t…I don’t…” Unshed tears clogged her throat, keeping her from saying anything, not that it mattered because she had no idea of what she would say.

“I’m not asking for anything from you. I just need you to know that I love you.  I won’t mention it again, I promise. You can still stay at my place if you need it, or I can book you a hotel somewhere if that would be easier, but I had to tell you.”

The anguish in his voice stabbed like a knife. “I’m not in love with you, Chris. I’m in love with my husband,” she said as gently as she could.

“Are you really?”

“Yes!” She answered without thinking. She couldn’t think about that right now. Couldn’t think about that ever. “I have to go. I need to open up and Jason and Patricia are here. I can’t do this right now.”

“Of course. “ He stood up straight and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry for upsetting you.” His fingers dug into his palm.

“No. You did what you thought you needed to do.” She ran her hand through her hair out of habit. “I, um, I’ll talk to you…later…I guess. I have to go. Bye.” She hit the end button before he could respond and dropped her phone on her desk.

Chris placed his phone carefully on his desk. He scratched his cheek a few times as he reviewed in his head all the ways he had fucked that up and then stabbed the intercom button. “You needed something, Todd?”

>< 

Willa didn’t finish her breakfast. She didn’t even bother getting lunch. Even water made her stomach roil and scream so she sucked on Jolly Ranchers and shelved books and let other people deal with the customers.  Patricia would do the story hour today, and the book club that night supervised themselves. Swearing under her breath, she pulled the Bible from where some idiot had shelved it in the fantasy section and then made her way to the horror section to find the copy of the Koran that the same idiot would have put there. Some day she was going to catch the asshole in the act and break at least two of the commandments dealing with him. She was just placing them back in the religion section when she heard Jonathan asking if she was around.

Willa pressed her hand to her mouth against the surge of nausea and took a few breaths to steady herself before she emerged from the bookshelves. Jonathan was already making his way towards her. He had a big box tucked under his arm and he didn’t smile when he saw her. Willa didn’t say anything; she just headed towards her office.

She scooped up the pile of papers and books that were covering the other chair in her office and dumped them in the box with the hand puppets before sitting down. Jonathan closed the door behind him and sat on the newly excavated chair. The box loomed ominously on his lap.

Her breath shuddered as she tried to act calm. “Hi.”

“Hello.”

She folded her hands in her lap, twisting her fingers together like a Celtic knot. “So?” She couldn’t figure out how to get more than one word out as she waited for his verdict. His arms were folded on top of the box. Willa watched the light reflect off the scattering of hairs on his tan forearms. She couldn’t make herself look him in the face and see the dark circles under his eyes and the lines around his mouth. He looked a decade older than he had yesterday.

“I’m willing to forgive you but if we’re going to make this work, I have two conditions.”

The air left her like a popped balloon. “Anything.”

“We both go see a counselor together. Not just me. This is something we both need to deal with together.”

“Of course.” She nodded repeatedly. “That’s a really smart idea.”

“And second, you destroy everything in this box.” He placed it on her desk.

Willa frowned as she stood up to see what was in it. She pulled open the woven flaps. The first thing she saw was her first edition _O, Pioneers._ She reverently pulled it out and clasped it to her chest. Tears filled her eyes. “Please, don’t make me get rid of this,” she begged.

“I want it gone. I want all that stuff out of our house.”

She couldn’t put it down but she reached into the box and pulled out one of her high school yearbooks. “Really, Jonathan?”

“Really. All of it. I want him gone.” He grabbed the rest of the yearbooks from the box and set them on her desk. Out next came snow globes she had collected during her and Chris’s cross country road trip. Just the ones from that trip though. The rest of them must still be on their shelf at home. The small box from the attic came next. She hadn’t even known that he knew about that. Other books, all of them ones she had read with Chris, rained down on her desk.

“How did you know which books to choose?”

“They all have things tucked in them. Ticket stubs, notes, pressed flowers, comments written in the margins. I went through your bookshelves last night. Every single book.  All those books are tied to him. Not just the one you’re holding like it’s the baby I can’t give you.”

Willa looked down at the book she was clutching. Chris had given it to her for her eighteenth birthday and she had scolded him for spending so much money on her. “He’s in the past. I swear. I’ll never see him again.”

“He’s not the past, Willa. You made him our present, and if we want to have a future I need to know that you’ve let go of him. I don’t want his ghost in our house!”

Willa pressed her hand to her forehead as she desperately fought to keep from crying. Her shoulders shook and her teeth chattered as she tried to control her emotions. “I’ll destroy everything but let me sell the Cather. Its first edition, Jonathan.”

“I don’t care! I’m your husband and I need to know you’re serious about choosing me. I need you to destroy that book. I need to know you’re willing to sacrifice for me.”

Like she hadn’t sacrificed for him all these years?  Her sorrow sublimated into anger. “And what are you willing to sacrifice for me?”

“I’m not the one who cheated!”

“I wouldn’t have cheated if you’d gotten off your moral high horse and agreed to pursuing adoption!” she shouted at him.

“So it’s my fault you fucked him?” he bellowed in return.

“No.” She collapsed into her chair and sat silently for a few minutes with her eyes closed, holding the Cather against her chest. Her thoughts chased each other like a dog with its tail, but they slowly settled into one conclusion. Eventually she opened her eyes. “I’ll destroy it on one condition.”

“You don’t get to make conditions, Willa.”

She sat forward and placed _O, Pioneers_ between them on her desk. “No. I do. This isn’t about me cheating, or you taking me back. It’s about whether or not I choose to stay married to you. I’ll destroy the Cather if you agree to either adoption or a sperm donor.”

“You know my feelings on that.”

“I do. And you’re putting your sentiments ahead of my happiness. If you get to leave me because I won’t destroy a book, I get to leave you because you don’t want to have a family.”

“I _want_ to have a family, Willa. _We_ are a family,” he pleaded.

“I want _children_ , and it’s not that you can’t give me that. It’s that you _won’t_ give me that.”

He stood up and shoved his hand through his hair. A bit of his belly showed where his t-shirt rode up. Even heartbroken and furious she still found him attractive.

“So you’re choosing Chris over me.”

She sat back in her chair and closed her eyes, trying to block out some of the pain that filled the room more than air. “No. No I’m not. I’m choosing to become a mother and you don’t want to be a part of that strongly enough to overcome your issues. Me cheating on you with Chris just forced me to confront the problem sooner, but we were heading this way already.”

“Okay.”

She opened her eyes. “Okay? Easy as that?”

“This isn’t easy.” He looked like a tower of rage standing there with his hands on his hips. “The last twenty-four hours have been the hardest of my life, but I’m not going to change my mind and I don’t think you’re going to change yours either.”

“I’m not,” she murmured.

“Do you work until close today?”

“No, just until four.”

He nodded but didn’t look at her. “Why don’t you come by after work, pack up some stuff you’ll need for the next few days, and then um, we’ll talk this weekend and figure things out.”

“Okay.”

He turned and left, and that’s when Willa realized that okay was the hardest word she’d ever said in her life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be at least one more story with Willa and Chris. Look for it in a few weeks.


End file.
